This article argues that we need to learn from the living earth how living systems sustain themselves and use this knowledge to transform our unsustainable and destructive social systems into sustainable and symbiotic systems within systems. I first set out what I take to be four central features of sustainable living systems according to the life and earth sciences. Secondly, I set out what I take to be the main features of our unsustainable social system that cause damage to the (...) ecosphere on the one hand and give rise to the illusion of independence from it on the other hand. I then turn to several ways of responding to the sustainability crisis that are informed by this way of thinking about our interdependent relationship in and with ecosocial systems. These are ways of dis-engaging from our unsustainable practices, beginning to engage in practices of re-engaging and reconnecting socially and ecologically, and thus beginning to bring into being unalienated and sustainable ways of life on earth. If the symbiotic interdependency thesis of the first section is true, then participants in these connecting practices should be empowered in reciprocity by the interdependent relationships they connect with, and thus initiate expanding virtuous cycles. This reciprocal empowerment is discussed in the final section. (shrink)

The ways citizen participation and democracy are changing are poorly understood due to the dominance of theories inherited from the eighteenth century. Democratic citizenship can be better understood if critical reflection is re-oriented around the games of concrete freedom here and now as recommended by Hannah Arendt, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault and Quentin Skinner.This orientation brings to light two distinctive types of citizen freedom in the present: diverse forms of citizen participation and diverse practices of governance in which citizens participate.

This is the first comprehensive evaluation of Charles Taylor's work and a major contribution to leading questions in philosophy and the human sciences as they face an increasingly pluralistic age. Charles Taylor is one of the most influential contemporary moral and political philosophers: in an era of specialisation he is one of the few thinkers who has developed a comprehensive philosophy which speaks to the conditions of the modern world in a way that is compelling to specialists in various disciplines. (...) This collection of specially commissioned essays brings together twelve distinguished scholars from a variety of fields to discuss critically Taylor's work. The topics range from the history of philosophy, to truth, modernity and postmodernity, theism, interpretation, the human sciences, liberalism, pluralism and difference. Taylor responds to all the contributions and re-articulates his own views. (shrink)

Political theorists have begun to re-examine claims by indigenous peoples to lands which were expropriated in the course of sixteenth-eighteenth century European expansionism. In Australia, these issues have captured public attention as they emerged in two central High Court cases: Mabo (1992) and Wik (1996), which recognize pre-existing common law rights of native title held by indigenous people prior to European contact and, in some cases, continue to be held to the present day. The theoretical significance of the two Australian (...) cases is examined and the links drawn out between the current debate about Aboriginal land rights in Australia and the wider philosophical debate about indigenous land rights, property rights, and indigenous justice as characterized by Jeremy Waldron and James Tully. Justice towards indigenous groups requires substantial acknowledgement and recognition of the values and institutions of the relevant indigenous group; yet, these values and institutions may not readily fall under the framework of existing state structures. Attempts to redress injustice towards indigenous groups which do not question the justice of existing state institutions will therefore prove to be inadequate responses to indigenous peoples' demands for substantive justice. (shrink)

In this paper, I delineate one tradition of contemporary political thought that has emerged within the more general climate of difference and diversity. This is ‘agonistic pluralism’. The paper evaluates the recent work of three authors, who exemplify this strand of political thinking; William Connolly, Chantal Mouffe, and James Tully. Over the past decade, each of these three has developed the notion of agonistic pluralism. The task here is to examine points of comparison between them. I compare the three (...) authors' conceptions of politics and of the dimension of the political. I make the case that their work complements one another, they each endorse broad notions of the political; and they understand politics to be constitutive of social relations. Nevertheless, the forms of politics that they describe differ from one another. It is my contention that these forms of politics are interdependent and mutually reinforcing. However, I maintain that in order for their work to be understood in this way, the political practices described by Connolly and Tully — struggles for self-making and for recognition respectively — must be re-figured as forms of sub-constitutional politics. These forms of politics will make up necessary elements of a viable pluralist society, but they are played out within multiple public spheres made possible by — what we might call — the quasi-republican political constitution elaborated by Mouffe. (shrink)

Constitutionalism in an Age of Diversity James Tully. these ambassadors from Haida Gwaii conciliate the goods which appear irreconcilable to us? To discover the answer, and learn our way around on this strange common ground, we need to ...

James Tully: To Think and Act Differently collects classic, contemporary, and previously unpublished examples of public philosophy in action from across James Tully's four decades of scholarship. The book provides readers with a perspicuous representation of public philosophy as an ongoing experiment with reconstructing the practice of political theory as a democratizing and diversifying dialogue between scholars and citizens. This volume offers an overview of this participatory mode of political philosophy and political change by reconstructing the arc of (...) Tully's intellectual trajectory in contexts, illuminating moments of clarification and transformation, and the ways it continues to shed new insights into the challenges of citizenship in the present. Topics discussed include approaches to the history of political though, constitutionalism, democratic theory, comparative political theory, intercultural dialogue and translation; Indigenous political thought; settler colonialism and empire; climate change and sustainability; modernity; nonviolence; and mutual aid. It will be of interest to scholars of political philosophy, political theory, constitutional law, Indigenous studies, intellectual history, and ecological humanities. It will be of interest to scholars of political philosophy, political theory, constitutional law, Indigenous studies, intellectual history, and ecological humanities. (shrink)

We rely on a recent puzzle by Alex Blum to offer a new argument for the old Fitch’s thesis that what we learn a posteriori in Kripkean identity statements like ‘Tully is Cicero’ is contingent and what is not contingent in such statements is analytical, hence hardly a posteriori.

Agonistic democrats have enriched debates on the political challenge of pluralism by raising awareness for the depth of disagreements and the political potentials of conflict. However, they have so far failed to explore the shape of institutional settings that are conducive to agonism and show how the agonistic stance may, in a very practical sense, strengthen democracies’ capacity to deal with pluralism and conflict. This article argues that this ‘institutional deficit’ of agonistic democracy can be overcome. It develops an approach (...) that reads theories of agonistic democracy as accounts of conflict regulation and uses principles of agonistic politics as measures for a critical assessment of institutional design. A discussion of a test case that is prominent in the recent literature on democratic innovations for pluralist societies—mini-publics—demonstrates that the principles of agonistic conflict regulation as developed by Mouffe, Connolly and Tully provide the basis for both a critique of certain institutions and a development of alternative designs. (shrink)

John Locke's theory of property is perhaps the most distinctive and the most influential aspect of his political theory. In this book James Tully uses an hermeneutical and analytical approach to offer a revolutionary revision of early modern theories of property, focusing particularly on that of Locke. Setting his analysis within the intellectual context of the seventeenth century, Professor Tully overturns the standard interpretations of Locke's theory, showing that it is not a justification of private property. Instead he (...) shows it to be a theory of individual use rights within a framework of inclusive claim rights. He links Locke's conception of rights not merely to his ethical theory, but to the central arguments of his epistemology, and illuminates the way in which Locke's theory is tied to his metaphysical views of God and man, his theory of revolution and his account of a legitimate polity. (shrink)

I argue that consideration of certain cases of severe depression reveals a problem for desire-based theories of welfare. I first show that depression can result in a person losing her desires and then identify a case wherein it seems right to think that, as a result of very severe depression, the individuals described no longer have any desires whatsoever. I argue that the state these people are in is a state of profound ill-being: their lives are going very poorly for (...) them. Yet desire theories get this case wrong. Because no desires are being frustrated, the desire theorist has no grounds for ascribing ill-being; indeed, because the individuals described seem utterly without desire, the desire theorist has no grounds for treating these people as subjects of welfare ascription at all. I argue that these results are unacceptable; therefore, we should reject desire-based theories of well-being and ill-being. (shrink)

Quentin Skinner is one of the leading thinkers in the social sciences and humanities today. Since the publication of his first important articles some two decades ago, debate has continued to develop over his distinctive contributions to contemporary political philosophy, the history of political theory, the philosophy of social science, and the discussion of interpretation and hermeneutics across the humanities and social sciences. Nevertheless, his most valuable essays and the best critical articles concerning his work have been scattered in various (...) journals and difficult to obtain. Meaning and Context includes five of the most widely discussed articles by Skinner, which present his approach to the study of political thought and the interpretation of texts. Following these are seven articles by his critics, five of these drawn from earlier publications and two, by John Keane and Charles Taylor, written especially for this volume. Finally, there appears a fifty-seven page reply by Skinner--a major new statement in which he defends and reformulates his method and lays out new lines of research. The editorial introduction provides a systematic overview of the evolution of Skinner's work and of the main reactions to it.Besides James Tully, John Keane, and Charles Taylor, the contributors include Joseph V. Femia, Keith Graham, Martin Hollis, Kenneth Minogue, and Nathan Tarcov. (shrink)

This article argues for the recovery and re-incorporation of lost voices and debates into the history of political thought by focusing on the issue of sovereignty. It begins by examining why such a narrow understanding of the canon has come to dominate the sub-discipline and argues for critical approaches that treat the past as a “contested terrain” rather than an unfolding plot. It then turns to early twentieth-century Britain as an example of an era when thinkers who have been largely (...) forgotten by today’s political theorists argued loudly about the future of state sovereignty. It next focuses on a 1916 exchange of essays entitled “The Nature of the State in View of Its External Relations” by Delisle Burns, Bertrand Russell, and G.D.H. Cole, as an example of some of the most innovative and radical ideas to emerge from the period. The article concludes by arguing that re-engaging the work of these forgotten thinkers can broaden our conceptual horizons about sovereignty, speak to some of the most urgent issues of our time, and force open the concept of “the political” to radical reinterpretation. (shrink)

The editor of Political Theory asked us to respond to the question, 'What is political theory?' This question is as old as political theory or political philos- ophy. The activity of studying politics, whether it is called science, theory, or philosophy, always brings itself into question. The question does not ask for a single answer, for there are countless ways of studying politics and no univer- sal criteria for adjudicating among them. Rather, the question asks, 'What comparative difference does it (...) make to study politics this way rather than that?' Political theory or philosophy not only spans three millennia of study- ing politics in innumerable ways but also three millennia of dialogues among practitioners over various approaches, their relative merits, and the contest- able criteria for their comparison. Because there is no definitive answer, there is no end to this dialogue. Rather, it is the kind of open-ended dialogue that brings insight through the activity of reciprocal elucidation itself. Dialogue partners gain insight into what ruling, being ruled, and contesting rule is through the exchange of questions and answers over different ways of study-ing politics and different criteria for their assessment in relation to how they throw light on different aspects of the complex worlds of politics-and what counts as the 'different aspects of the complex worlds of politics' is also ques- tioned in the course of the dialogue.'. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to deepen our understanding of transformative engagement in comparative and critical dialogues of comparative or transnational political thought. The first five sections discuss the challenges of dialogical comparative political thought. The following three sections discuss how a dialogue approach responds to these challenges and generates comparative and critical mutual understanding and mutual judgment.

During the last forty years, the Aboriginal peoples of the Americas, of the British Commonwealth, and of other countries colonized by Europeans over the last five hundred years have demanded that their forms of property and government be recognized in international law and in the constitutional law of their countries. This broad movement of 250 million Aboriginal people has involved court cases, parliamentary politics, constitutional amendments, the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the development of an international law of (...) Aboriginal peoples, and countless nonviolent and violent actions in defense of Aboriginal systems of property and cultures. The Aboriginal peoples of New Zealand, Canada, and the United States have been at the forefront of the movement, and it is in these countries that the greatest legal recognition has been achieved. (shrink)

An approach to political philosophy: Locke in contexts brings together Professor Tully's most important and innovative statements on Locke in a treatment of the latter's thought that is at once contextual and critical. The essays have been rewritten and expanded for this volume, and each seeks to understand a theme of Locke's political philosophy by interpreting it in light of the complex contexts of early modern European political thought and practice. These historical studies are then used in a variety (...) of ways to gain critical perspectives on the assumptions underlying current debates in political philosophy and the history of political thought. The themes treated include government, toleration, discipline, property, aboriginal rights, individualism, power, labour, self-ownership, community, progress, liberty, participation, and revolution. (shrink)

Les premières conférences John Robert Seeley, données par James Tully en 1994, traitaient des six types de demandes de reconnaissance culturelle qui sont au coeur des conflits les plus insolubles de notre époque : les associations supranationales, le nationalisme et le fédéralisme, les minorités linguistiques et ethniques, le féminisme, le multiculturalisme et l'autonomie gouvernementale des Autochtones. Ni les écoles actuelles du constitutionnalisme occidental moderne ni le constitutionnalisme post-moderne n'offrent d'outil équitable pour juger ces demandes diverses de reconnaissance parce qu'elles (...) reposent sur des suppositions indéfendables, héritées de l'époque de l'impérialisme européen. Toutefois, en effectuant une étude critique et historique de quatre cents ans de constitutionnalisme européen et non européen, et en prêtant une attention particulière aux populations autochtones d'Amérique, James Tully élabore une philosophie et une pratique post-impériales du constitutionnalisme. Elles consistent à concilier des demandes de reconnaissance à travers le temps grâce à des dialogues constitutionnels qui permettent à des citoyens de se mettre d'accord sur des formes adéquates d'accommodements de leurs différences culturelles, guidées par des conventions constitutionnelles communes. Cette forme de constitutionnalisme a la capacité de résoudre des conflits de notre époque et d'apporter la paix au vingt et unième siècle. (shrink)

. How does the doctrine of double effect apply to business decisions to sell products which may be harmful to consumers? Lawrence Masek believes that some authors have misapplied the doctrine to this type of decision and, as a consequence, have committed themselves to placing unwarranted constraints on businesses. Seeking to correct this mistake, Masek presents his account of how the doctrine applies here, an account which is rather permissive but which, he claims, nevertheless preserves the virtues of the doctrine. (...) It will be seen, though, that his attempt to loosen these putatively unnecessary constraints by appealing to consumer autonomy and an intuition about the morality of producing harmful products leaves the doctrine of double effect irrelevant to this type of decision. His argument that the doctrine is less restrictive in this context than others suppose leads ultimately to the conclusion that the doctrine does not constrain this kind of business decision at all. (shrink)

the role of John Locke's chapter on property in the Two Treatises in dispossessing the Indigenous peoples of America of their traditions territories. It discusses the argument in detail as well as the history of its uses and indigenous responses to it.

These two ambitious volumes from one of the world's most celebrated political philosophers present a new kind of political and legal theory that James Tully calls a public philosophy, and a complementary new way of thinking about active citizenship, called civic freedom. Professor Tully takes the reader step-by-step through the principal debates in political theory and the major types of political struggle today. These volumes represent a genuine landmark in political theory from the author of Strange Multiplicity, one (...) of the most influential and distinctive commentaries on politics and the contemporary world published in recent years. This first volume of Public Philosophy in a New Key consists of a presentation and defence of a contextual approach to public philosophy and civic freedom, and then goes on to study specific struggles over recognition and distribution within states. (shrink)

The field comprising both the theory and practice of struggles over recognition developed over the last 50 years in relative independence of the parallel field of deliberative and agonistic democracy. Over the last decade these two fields, in both theory and practice, have merged because courts, legislatures, ministries and rival armies around the world have often turned the reconciliation of struggles over recognition over to various institutions and practices of negotiation and deliberation. The result is the emergence of a new (...) hybrid field of recognition and dialogue. This paper is a critical examination of the emergence and the strengths and weaknesses of this new and important field of politics and law. (shrink)

G. E. Moore's ‘A Defence of Common Sense’ has generated the kind of interest and contrariety which often accompany what is new, provocative, and even important in philosophy. Moore himself reportedly agreed with Wittgenstein's estimate that this was his best article, while C. D. Broad has lamented its very great but largely unfortunate influence. Although the essay inspired Wittgenstein to explore the basis of Moore's claim to know many propositions of common sense to be true, A. J. Ayer judges its (...) enduring value to lie in provoking a more sophisticated conception of the very type of metaphysics which disputes any such unqualified claim of certainty. (shrink)

This paper presents and defends a new conception of freedom as a value in the sphere of economic production. It challenges the common, proprietarian-contractual view of economic liberty. My alternative integrates three elements: compossible control, non-alienation, and reason-responsiveness. After surveying various forms of freedom, conceptual ground is cleared for the presentation of those three elements in a relational structure. I define them, show how they interpenetrate, and argue for their shared centrality. Compossible control involves a person’s conditions of economic agency (...) being sufficiently under their influence to satisfy their entitlement to a self-directed life, consistent with others having equivalent control in their own case. Non-alienation involves having reasons to apprehend one’s productive activities as a worthy manifestation of one’s identity. Reason responsiveness obtains when the requirements of production that one faces can be met by weighing and acting on reasons one takes as normative. I then discuss possible objections to my account. These have to do with its consistency with market requirements, the coherence of its basic distinctions, and the importance ascribed to non-alienation. I show how each of these objections are defeated. (shrink)

John Locke's subtle and influential defense of religious toleration as argued in his seminal _Letter Concerning Toleration_ appears in this edition as introduced by one of our most distinguished political theorists and historians of political thought.

I would like to present a two part response to the following question that Seyla Benhabib posed at a conference at Harvard University in 1999: “Is there a Transition from Distribution to Recognition?” The first part proposes that issues of distribution and recognition should be seen as aspects of political struggles, rather than distinct types of struggle, and thus a form of analysis is required that has the capacity to study political struggles under both aspects. The second part suggests that (...) struggles over multicultural and multinational recognition are undergoing an important change in practice which requires a corresponding change in the prevailing forms of analysis. These two recommendations rest on and follow from an underlying orientation. The primary but not exclusive orientation would be practices of freedom rather than theories of justice. The aim of such an aspectival political philosophy and corresponding democratic political practice would not be to discover and constitutionalize thejust and definitive form of recognition and distribution, but to ensure that ineliminable, agonic democratic games over recognition and distribution, with their rival theories of distribution and recognition, can be played freely, with a minimum of domination. (shrink)

This paper offers a brief account and defense of freely associated production as a political ideal. I discuss its conceptual structure, specifying what is meant by free association in terms of economic production, the sense in which it is a value for political order, and its approximate place in an historical lineage of reflection on freedom. Given that our economic arrangements are constitutively determined by law and public policy, and involve relations of governing power, the values that legal authority must (...) subserve bear directly on the productive sphere. One of those values – arguably the highest – is relational freedom. Reigning structures of production violate its demands. Without understanding the ways in which that violation occurs, we cannot effectively address some of our most urgent social crises. (shrink)

Most agree that Scotus is a voluntarist of some kind. In this paper we argue against recent interpretations of Scotus’s ethics (and metaethics) according to which the norms concerning human actions are largely, if not wholly, the arbitrary products of God’s will. On our reading, the Scotistic variety of voluntarism on offer is much more nuanced. Key to our interpretation is keeping distinct what is too often conflated: the reasons why Scotus maintains that the laws of the Second Table of (...) the Decalogue are (a) contingent (a modal distinction) as well as (b) not universal (a categorical distinction). A proper interpretation of Scotus must also take seriously the fact that these Second Table laws are natural laws “exceedingly in harmony with” (multum consona) the necessary laws, and are distinct from and not reducible to divine positive laws. (shrink)

This book examines a fundamental social paradox: although less equality certainly entrenches injustice, more equality may nevertheless protect the advantages that one group enjoys over fellow citizens. Their studies confront us with vivid cases where equality for some is preferred to equality for all.

In this paper, I address the question of whether it is ever permissible to grant a request for physician-aid-in-dying (PAD) from an individual suffering from treatment-resistant depression. I assume for the sake of argument that PAD is sometimes permissible. There are three requirements for PAD: suffering, prognosis, and competence. First, an individual must be suffering from an illness or injury which is sufficient to cause serious, ongoing hardship. Second, one must have exhausted effective treatment options, and one’s prospects for recovery (...) must be poor. Third, the individual must be judged competent to request PAD. I argue that many cases of treatment-resistant depression meet the first two requirements. Thus, the key question concerns the third. I consider four features of depression that might compromise a person’s decision-making capacity. Ultimately, I conclude that PAD requests from depressed patients can be permissibly granted in some circumstances. (shrink)

Many of the thousands of human embryos currently in cryogenic storage will sooner or later be discarded, often after being experimented upon. Others will remain in storage indefinitely, left there by parents who have no plans either to bring them to term or to offer them for adoption. These facts, coupled with a commitment to the basic moral equality of all human beings at all stages of development, generate a pressing question: What should be done for these embryos whose vital (...) activities have been suspended and whose futures look so bleak? This paper offers a case that allows some of these cryogenically stored embryos to thaw and die, allows disposal of their remains in a manner that reflects their status, and is morally acceptable in that it is consistent with the principles that many accept as governing the removal of life-sustaining treatment in end-of-life cases. (shrink)